Amanda Campbell

I then went over to DanSpace to see Jon Bennett’s show American’t. There’s a woman who I follow on Instagram, Brooke Black, who is American, but her husband is Danish, and they along with their two young children got stuck in Denmark during the Covid lockdowns and they ended up staying there. Her account is all about an American acclimatizing to a much better life there, especially for their kids. Jon Bennett’s show is kind of the opposite. He is from Australia, but he has been a touring performer for the last eighteen years, and so, effectively, he actually didn’t have a home base when he got stuck in Portland, Oregon when everything shut down in March of 2020. The person there that he knew the best was a woman named Gina who he’d had a one night stand with the night before he was supposed to leave Oregon for his next show in California. They got to know each other much better after spending six weeks together in the first round of lockdowns. Click on the link to read more!

This is a great little Fringe play written and directed by Hal Rotman. We are transported to the forests of Indonesia where we encounter a community of apes. One ape in particular, Diane, played by Laura Spencer with a New York accent, has grand ambitions. She wants to write an opus on a typewriter that she found that will live on after her death and bring her esteem, even amongst humans. Her friend, Bonzo, played by Max Miller, is worried that her preoccupation with besting the humans is divorcing her from appreciating the best parts of being an ape, and making her miserable in the process. Indeed, the other young monkeys played by Ella Haefele and Dylan Jackson are even less sophisticated and articulate than Bonzo, and they are happy as clams playing blissfully and joyfully together. Bonzo decides to take Diane to see the wisest ape in their community, played with great gravitas by River Moser, who can hopefully help her find a more emotionally and intellectually fulfilling path. Diane resists at first, but gets coaxed into finding community with the other apes through her love of Bonzo. Click the link to read the full review

I then went down to the Stardust Bar + Kitchen to see Steven Morton’s show Drag Me To the Opera. This show is so clever, beautiful and multilayered. We are introduced to Aida Cupcake, a drag queen who performs soprano opera roles, but she is telling the true autobiographical story of Steven Morton, the writer and performer of the piece, who dropped out of business school in University quite abruptly to switch into studying voice with the dream of someday becoming an opera singer. Inter-spliced between the parts of this story that take Steven from Calgary to British Columbia to Weimar, Germany, and back to Calgary Aida Cupcake sings a selection of arias from Romeo and Juliet to Dido and Aeneas, which is interesting because Steven himself is performing tenor roles during this time in his life. But, there’s something wrong. The feedback that he gets from a panel in Germany has the power to careen his singing career all together. The discrepancy between what his voice can do in these soprano roles and what he’s being told is lacking in his performance as a tenor is beautifully illustrated through Aida Cupcake. Click the link for the full review

I then went over to the Neptune Theatre’s Imperial Studio to catch the last performance of Ada Cheng’s The Trouble With My Hair, an engaging storytelling show that is very much exactly like the write up in the Fringe programme.

Cheng, who was born and raised in Taiwan and moved to the United States as an adult, begins by telling us about the trouble she has getting exactly the right haircut from her Italian hair stylist, even though she is much more consistently pleased with the colour. Under the lights in front of us her hair looks more pink, matching her bright lipstick, and we see a photo of her with very bright but deep and rich red hair, and I agree that both colours are magnificent. Cheng finds it challenging to have difficult conversations with people, especially when this includes having to be honest, advocate for herself, and draw some boundaries. Click the link for full review

Next I saw August Van Meekeren’s show Apples: As Told By An Expert. August Van Meekeren is really exploring a concept in this show instead of purely constructing a narrative or doing a stand up routine. They are playing with the concept of truth and fiction as it relates both to autobiographical storytelling and also standup. How much do performers take liberties with the truth from their lives and shape it, exaggerate it, change it all together, and at any point do they owe the audience a disclaimer? Van Meekeren is also touching on an underlying theme of at what point do you decide that your real life isn’t interesting enough, isn’t funny enough, that you need to dramatically change it in order to make it more palatable for an audience? And what effect does that have on someone’s own self esteem?

The challenge in Apples is that much of it is designed on purpose to be awkward, as we see Van Meekeren judging their own material as not being funny or sharp or insightful enough, especially for stand up, and pivoting instead to telling these three very engaging stories that also aren’t necessarily meant to be hilarious, but that have compelling narrative arcs, and are harrowing and disturbing at times, and none of which have anything to do with apples- which they are shamed for by a secondary character. If the audience is hooked into the conceit, there’s a great bait and switch moment near the end of the show that works well, and Van Meekeren has really accomplished, I think, what they set out to do- I just wonder if you don’t get the conceit of the piece it might be a little bit confusing. Click the link for full review!

The Defenestration of Prague is written and directed by Jake Wilke, and it centres on a true event from 1618 when there was a breach in the established norms in Bohemia where suddenly the new Catholic King sought to impose Catholicism on all his Protestant subjects, when previously Catholic Kings had ruled in part by leaving the Protestant religion alone. Incensed at having their right to religious freedom attacked a group of Protestant nobles confronted a group of Catholic lords acting in place of the King as regents, and ended up throwing two of them and their secretary out of a third floor window.

This is a great narrative for a play, and I really liked the way that Wilke has drawn comparisons between this very specific circumstance that is quite different from ours, to the recent barring of singing activists from Province House (their bans have since been lifted). The Progressive Conservatives in the Legislature still seem to be easily intimidated through song. So too are the Catholic lords in this play intimidated by a very powerful scene where the Protestants begin to sing all together what sounds like maybe a real folk song from the area. Click the link for full review

I then took the bus to the Bus Stop Theatre, since it was raining, and I joined a sold out crowd at the new Emma Lamont play The Atomic Priesthood where we were all treated to two understudy performances- Emma Lamont played Talia, and Thunder Defayette played Mars, and both did a great job- I didn’t know that they were understudies when I watched the show, and I wouldn’t have guessed.

We find ourselves 10,000 years in the future, where the connection between the past and this future has been severed. A small group of humans have been living on this one section of land for a relatively short period of time. Now they are beginning to get sick, and die in a horrifying fashion. They are, of course, frightened, but Sol, very well played by Shadow St.Pierre-Farrow, remains calm. They have had a dream that they believe explains that the glowing green cats that inhabit this place are Gods, who can be appeased with favours. Sol’s beliefs grow into a fringe religion, with disciples, Mars and Talia. But when Talia’s own sister gets sick and their initial offerings to the Gods don’t show any immediate relief from the suffering they introduce an element of doubt to the community that challenges Sol’s leadership, and everything becomes a lot more dangerous. Click on the link for full review!

I then went over to the Neptune Theatre Imperial Studio to see Jon Pickett: Fresh Off the Lot a stand up set by Jon Pickett all about his time working as a used car salesman at an undisclosed local establishment, although I think I saw this show with an audience filled with his former coworkers, because they seemed to be operating on an informed level that I wasn’t tapped into, and that was a fun experience.

I had no idea what to expect with this show beyond the obvious, that it was going to focus on funny anecdotes about working as a car salesman, but I was surprised that there is a real emotional arc to this show. Pickett is from Labrador and he’s charming in a way that is self deprecating, and also characteristic of the East Coast. His sense of humour and his point of view feels both familiar and local, which works very well since he’s telling a hyper-local story. When he talks about having a difficult conversation at a food court with a New York Fries in it, I can immediately imagine where that food court might be. Click the link for full review!

I transitioned back to Adult Fringe and headed over to DanSpace to see Loony Lundi written by Roz Kennery and Madison Arsenault, and directed by Emily Lux. The theme for this part of my day was understudies. I saw three understudies in shows today. In this show Arsenault played the role of Noella Loon, normally played as Nool Loon by Myles Bradley. Bradley did appear in the play during some pre-recorded moments.

River and their mother Alice are at a therapy appointment with an unconventional therapist. When they don’t seem to be able to connect with each other and see things from the other’s point of view Noella Loon enlists the magic of loon, which allows them not only to change places Freaky Friday style, but to travel through time experiencing each other’s realities in an entirely immersive way. As such River gains a better understanding of how difficult Alice’s life was being pregnant and working in a smokey bar while bracing herself for her partner’s exit, and Alice gets a reality check about the logistics of finding a job in the current economy, and being nonbinary in a non traditional relationship. Click the link for full review!

The first show we saw was Bird Watch by InesS Circus, which had beautiful costumes, and featured an array of different performers performing routines with aerial silks. Two bird watchers in fun vintage bathing suits are at the beach watching for birds. They find a goldfinch, a red cardinal, and a blue jay flying and doing tricks in the air, and the bird watchers dream of what it might be like to be able to fly for themselves. This concept worked beautifully for the show to showcase the skills and talents of all three of the performers playing the birds, and the performers playing the humans. The goldfinch wowed the audience with their ability to do the splits and spin very fast while hanging upside down, and their ability to use the silks to support themself in the air lying on their belly with their legs arched up over their head. The cardinal’s movements and music choice, with a Celtic pop vibe, were more vigorous and quicker paced, giving us a real ferocity in their flips, and after they spun around at the top of the apparatus they spun their way down nearly to the floor. The blue jay brought a real specificity of movement to their routine, and it was really neat to see how fast they were able to do their flips and the way that they could slide downward on the silks standing up vertically. The bird watchers were able to do even more daring tricks where they let themselves free fall at first, and then use the twisting of the silks around various parts of their bodies to catch themselves just in time. They also did a floor routine with bright wing-like fans, and spinning umbrellas. Read more at the link!